


Lost in the mountains

by imsfire



Series: Ten songs, ten stories [8]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Cassian coming back for Jyn, Childhood Memories, F/M, Feels, Fluff and Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Jyn's habit of giving her toys the daftest names, Pain, Rescue, and he always will, because he always does, follow-up to "Then her finger moved in the moonlight", which was posted earlier as pt 2 of another fic, wounded characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-06 10:38:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12815739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: "Cassian, you should go –“He takes her drooping head between his hands.  “If we don’t go soon, the Empire will find us.  They’ll kill you and capture me.  So either you let me help you or we both die!”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Trio Bulgarka: Vuv Pirina/ In the Pirin Mountains, a traditional song about an injured partisan and their lover...

“I’ve analysed the audio file,” K says “and it would appear the warning shot was fired by Jyn.”

Cassian doesn’t even stop to curse.  He unbuckles himself from the pilot’s seat and swings down, grabbing his weapons, his dark leather coat.  The leather jacket of moral ambiguity, Jyn calls it jokingly.  He can hear her voice saying it, and the little huff of startled pleasure she gives at finding herself cracking a joke.  Her sense of humour a blunt instrument, precious beyond any treasure.

“You’re going back,” K says.

“Yes.  Stay with the ship.”

“You are emotionally compromised.   It would be more efficient for me to look for Jyn and you to stay with the ship.”

“Stay with the ship, damn you, K!  I’m not going to say it again!”

A beat; the droid calculating a myriad outcomes before saying dryly “I will stay with the ship.”

“If we don’t return, leave without us.  You’ve got the intel.”

K-2SO nods.  “It will be deeply regrettable if you and Jyn do not return.”   

But Cassian is already gone, heading back up the mountainside at a run.

Thirty minutes and eleven dead ‘troopers later he finds her.  She’s crawled into a narrow gap between two boulders and pulled her scarf over her head.  If it weren’t for the trail of blood he might not have spotted that the low grey shape in the shadows was human at all.

“Jyn – _Jyn!”_

He pulls the fabric away, feels for a pulse; weak, but still there.  “Jyn!”  When he tries to lift her she moans inarticulately and then comes-to with a jolt.  An immediate instinct drags up her right hand, slamming a shaking blaster against his ribs before her eyes are even open.  He pushes it away quickly and gently.

“Easy! - easy there, don’t shoot me…”

“Cassian…” It’s a rough whisper and she grunts on the rest of the outbreath. 

“Shh, easy now, I’m here.  I’m gonna get you home.  Can you get up by yourself?”

She shakes her head after a moment’s thought.  Her pupils are dilated.  “Three hits – calf, hip, back.  Not good.”

“No.  No, that’s not good.”  He won’t lie to her, he promised himself a long time ago that he never would again.  But she is alive.  She was lost but he’s found her, and she’s coming home, if it kills him to do it.  “You’re not finished.  Come on!  Put your arms round my neck, I’m gonna help you get up.”

“Can’t.  Legs no good.”

Whether she means one leg or both, he can’t tell.  Her voice is increasingly frail.  Her lips are colourless, and look weirdly dry.  There’s a great deal of blood on the ground in the gully and she huddles into it with a whimper as he tries again to get her to her feet.

“Come on!  Work with me, Jyn.  Come on, you gotta try!”

“Can’t.  Sorry.  I’m sorry…  Cassian, you should go –“

Cassian takes her drooping head between his hands.  “If we don’t go soon, the Empire will find us.  They’ll kill you and capture me.  So either you let me help you or we both die.  Come _on_!”

Jyn blinks at him owlishly.  Draws in a hoarse, hard-tongued breath and says grumpily “Emotional blackmail...”

“Yeah, that’s the idea.”

“Oh fuck, alright then...” With a struggle she lifts both arms enough to get them round his neck.  “Right-o.  Heave-ho, off we go.”

“I’m lifting you now, okay?”

She weighs less than he remembers, and she whimpers in his arms.  Last time he carried her this way she was laughing, and there were flowers in her hair. 

He settles her as best he can.  “You good?”

“Yeah…”  It’s barely a breath of sound. 

One of her arms is sliding down already.  She hasn’t the strength to hold onto him.

He starts back down the mountain track, carrying her carefully as a child. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the ship, on the way to safety.

“Do you remember being a little kid?” Jyn asks at random.  She’s breathing hard and making small, suppressed sounds of discomfort as he bends over her.  He knows the technique she’s using, distracting herself from pain; he used it himself, too many times. 

“Huh?  Being a kid?  Yeah, yeah, I do.”

“What were you like?”

“Me?  Believe it or not, I was chubby.  And very dramatic.  I used to break down and cry, and over such tiny things as well.”

“Ahh, you must’ve been sweet…  ow…” 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry...  Shh, I know this hurts but just hang on for a moment while I get this last dressing on.  Nearly done.”

They’ve cleared atmo.  K is piloting, and flying for speed.

“I remember wanting things,” Jyn murmurs.  “When I was little.  Wanting, just - _wanting_.  I was so greedy.  Wanting to be things and do things, go places, try stuff.  Weird kid.  And I wanted to have everything, you know - cake, and sweets, all the sweet stuff, and toys, and glittery things and fluffy things…  I collected pebbles and shiny feathers and the down from seedpods.  I wanted a pet butterfly, how silly is that?  And of course I wanted a tooka-cat.”

“And now you’ve got a tooka-cat.” She winces under his hands as he tightens the final bandage.  “I’m sorry, shh, there, it’s all done.  You’re gonna be okay, Jyn.  You’re going home to Tooky, no?”

He’s got her stabilised, got a painkiller and some fluids into her and field dressings on her wounds.  It’s as much as he can do; now they just have to get her home. 

He draws her shirt down again, and lifts the bed-covers over her carefully.  She’s lying on her front, very limp and flat on the bunk, but her eyes are open and she’s conscious and lucid.  Cassian takes her near hand in his, squeezes it gently.  “We’re on our way home.  Hold on.”

“Did you want a tooka?  When you were a little boy?”

“I – ah, this is embarrassing – I wanted a dragon.”

“Pet krayt dragon?” Her lips curve into a weak smile; and is it his imagination, or is her colour just a fraction better?

“Any kind of dragon.  Brezak, varactyl, I wasn’t too bothered, just so long as it was big enough to ride on.  Something big and scaly that would eat up anyone who bullied me or my sister or upset my mama and papa.  It didn’t have to have fire-breath or acid-breath or anything fancy like that, or fly, although that would have been nice too.  But it needed to be big, ‘cos I wasn’t.”

“Of course you weren’t, you were a kid…”

“Yeah, and I was small for my age.  Small and plump.  Still amazes me that I came out skinny in the end…”  He squeezes her hand again. “Jyn, are you listening?  Can you tell me how you feel?”

“Tired.  My back – aches.   You gave me a shot, didn’t you?  There isn’t so much pain as before.”

“Try to stay awake if you can.”

“I know.”  Of course she knows; this isn’t the first time either of them has had this conversation, with one another or with other comrades.  She presses his hand back.  “Thank you for coming back for me.  Again.”

“Well, you know.  Always.”

The shuttle swoops and the faint twitch-lurch of entering hyperspace passes through them both.  Jyn makes a noise in her throat that might have started out as a moan, and controls it into something more like a sigh.  Takes another breath before saying very carefully “How long till home?”

“We’ll go direct, so maybe five hours?”  He’s already scrubbed the second part of the mission; it wouldn’t be feasible with just him and K anyway.  It will have to wait until another team can get into this sector.  “Do you want some more water?  I can stay with you if you need company.”

“Yeah.  Stay.”  Her hand shifts in his, with a grip that is cold and weak still, but alive.  “What would you have called your dragon, if you’d had one?  Draggy?”

“Draggy?”  Cassian finds a flutter of laughter somewhere in himself for that.  He lets it out, to amuse her and because it might help her stay alert. “Oh Jyn, my love, you’re really not very good at naming things, are you?  Draggy, huh?” He lifts her hand and kisses the tips of her fingers one by one before holding it to his breast. “No, I was gonna call him something dramatic, like Silverfrost or Snowheart, something big and heroic, and cold.  Storm-breath, Snow-killer, that kind of thing.  Ice-mane.”

“Krayt dragons don’t have manes.”

“But Imaginary Hero Dragons do…  I’m actually pretty glad now that they don’t exist.   Snowheart the dragon would probably have eaten me first of all.  Nice juicy little human, munch-munch.”

“Ugh, horrible.”  Her eyelids flutter closed for a moment and he tenses, watching her; she’s breathing through  something, he can see her nostrils flaring, a line coming and going on her brow.

“Jyn?  Do you need another pain shot?  There are still several more doses, you can have more if you need it.”

Jyn starts to shake her head and then opens her eyes and says with a sniff “Okay, krif it, the hells…  Yes please.  I’ve been trying to hold on but – that back wound, it’s really – really –“

A gasp as the cold tip of the hypospray presses against her neck for a second time; her face screws up in momentary discomfort at the pin-prick jab, then softens as another dose of analgesic rushes into her bloodstream.  She blinks up at him, manages a vague smile. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to tough it out, you know that.  We have supplies.”

“Yeah.  Habit.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling…  Here, tell me more about your dream pet.  Did you just want a tooka or anything else?”

“A tooka or a loth-cat, or a voorpak.  Mama read me a history book called “Heroines of Naboo” and there was a holo plate of ‘Stylish Ladies’ and they all had little pet voorpaks in their sleeves.  I thought it was the sweetest thing ever.  Like I said, fluffy things.”

“Fluffy things with teeth.”

“Hardly out of character, surely?”

“Fair enough.  You grew up small and cute and dangerous, just like a voorpak or a cat.  So, tell me, would you have called a voorpak Voorpy?”

She gives a tiny huff, scarcely more than an outbreath but markedly amused. “Probably.  I wanted to be the crazy pet lady when I grew up…  But I wanted so much, I – I _wanted._   When we went to Lah’mu, and suddenly my parents were happy for a while, and there was so much space and sky everywhere; I wanted to live like that.  I thought I’d grow up and be a farmer and marry another farmer and have lots of cats.  And then I wanted to study botany, or maybe bugs, and then I wanted to be a doctor, and then a programmer and then a pilot.  And still have cats, all the tookies…”  

Her pupils are almost back to the normal size and there is a definite tinge of colour in her lips again.  He kneels beside her holding her hand and thinks it is warmer.  In another hour or so he’ll get her an energy bar. 

“And then,” Jyn says “I stopped wanting.  “Everything was just one day at a time and stay alive and learn to fight better, learn to hack and code better, learn to please Saw better; and there was nothing I could want for me, no chance of anything ever being for me ever again.  Just the Cause.  It’s so strange to want things again, now.  Do you know what I mean?”

Her eyes are very bright, and steady on his.  He knows, Force, how he knows.  Knows, and wants, and is lost to name or explain what he wants; and knows it is still the strongest thing in his life, and the most real, now it has come again, this choice, this chance to want and have a hope of seeing what you want come to you. 

“Yeah,” he says.  “Yeah, it is strange.  But you know what?  I won’t give it up for anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of Cassian as a plump little boy with a tendency to cry and make dramatic scenes about things is inspired by some hilarious but touching gifsets that have been floating around on tumblr lately, of one of Diego Luna's performances as a child actor. Jyn's habit of giving her toys singularly uninspired names, meanwhile, seems to be canon.


End file.
